The Ruby Notebook (18 page)

I don’t realize how long we’ve talked until it’s nearly too dark to see her face. Once I turn on the blue glass table
lamp, I see that Madame Chevalier’s eyes look happy but tired. I wish her goodnight and kiss her goodbye.

Outside in the cool, dusky air, I realize I’m starving. Layla’s at a teachers’ meeting, so I’m on my own tonight. I swing by the
boulangerie
and pick up a mini quiche Lorraine for dinner. On the way home, munching on the quiche and crossing the Place Richelme, I run into Illusion.

Jean-Claude greets me with an energetic “Zeeta!” and kisses me soundly on each cheek.

I notice unlit torches piled beside him and the pungent smell of kerosene. A few meters away, Sabina is twisting Amandine’s hair into a bun, and Julien is warming up on the drums. “What are you up to?” I ask.

“Dancing with fire,” Jean-Claude says, a daring gleam in his eye. “Very dangerous, Zeeta. Don’t let your soul get too close. It might burst into flames.”

“I’ll take that risk,” I say, sitting on the wall of the fountain and finishing off my quiche.

It turns out that Illusion is holding an impromptu fire-dancing performance, something they don’t do often for lack of permits. “If the
flics
come, we’ll have to bolt,” Julien says nervously.

“We’ll be fine,” Sabina assures him.

“But we’ll have to be quick,” Amandine says. “Fifteen minutes, tops.” She douses the wicks with kerosene and lights a match. After a moment, the torches flare.

Julien begins pounding a primal beat on the bongos.
Amandine twirls two torches around her head in figure eights, then shimmies into a back bend. She tosses the torches into the air as she does a flip. Landing gracefully on her feet, she catches the torches just before they hit the ground, one in each hand.

People flock toward Illusion, oohing and aahing, drawn to the flames. Amandine looks especially young in the firelight, bending her tiny body in all directions. I can see why Jean-Claude would feel protective of her. Still, she possesses a fierceness, an intelligence that makes her much more than a needy little sister. I watch, hypnotized, as her body fades into the darkness and my eyes focus on the orange fireballs spiraling as if of their own accord.

What first set your soul on fire?
The question Jean-Claude posed at the
cave
party. I could have answered
Wendell
. Why didn’t I?

I let thoughts of Wendell drift away, and lose myself in the smell of smoke, the drumbeat, the whirl of Amandine’s skirt. Jean-Claude is warming up in the background, casually juggling torches as though they were oranges, tossing them high, then spinning on his heel to catch them. His face glows in the flame. I suck in a breath every time a torch moves near his black curls.

Amandine skips away, letting Sabina take center stage. She moves like a belly dancer, swaying her hips, gyrating her torso, swirling the torches, painting the night air with fire. Her stunts aren’t as impressive as Amandine’s acrobatics, and there aren’t as many gasps from the audience, but she’s
entrancing. The crowd is clapping now, in sync with the flicks of her hips and shoulders.

The flame briefly illuminates a part of the street that was in darkness, lighting up Tortue, in his Pierrot costume, leaning against a doorframe, perfectly still. I wonder if he’s worried about Amandine, his daughter, playing with fire. Or simply proud. Or a mix of both.

Sabina tosses the torches to Jean-Claude. Now that Amandine has rested, she skips onto the scene again. Jean-Claude tosses her the torches. He and Amandine throw the torches back and forth, high and low, both of them leaping and spinning as the flames arc between them. They maintain nearly constant eye contact, anticipating each other’s moves and cues. As Julien’s drumming grows faster, louder, rising into a wild fervor, Amandine runs to Jean-Claude, leaps onto his shoulders, swirling her torches overhead as he stands up.

It’s breathtaking. The audience explodes in applause.

Afterward, I sit with Illusion by the fountain. We’re all floating from the rush of the fire dancing. Sabina is talking with Amandine about some new costumes they’re designing, while Julien taps out complex rhythms on the bongos with his fingertips. Jean-Claude sits next to me and pulls his little notebook from his back pocket. I take out my ruby notebook. Together, we write, occasionally looking up to smile at each other, and then lower our heads to write some more.

I write about fire. Who knows what he’s writing about.

Once, he looks up and says, “Your wrists are ocean waves.”

“What do you mean?” I whisper.

“The way your wrists skim your page as you write. The invisible pulse inside, the hidden movement that keeps you alive.”

I look back down at my notebook, aware now, of the rhythm of my hands. It’s really too dark to see the words between scattered puddles of streetlamp light. It’s better this way. No chance that Madame Chevalier is reading this through her binoculars. I glance up at her dark window. Maybe she’s asleep. Or maybe she’s watching us in the darkness. I imagine her trading her binoculars for night-vision goggles once the sun sets.

As I look back down at my notebook, I feel Jean-Claude watching me for a while, then scribbling something in his notebook.

“What are you writing about?” I whisper.

He motions with his chin to my neck. “That necklace makes you look like you’ve just emerged from a tree hollow.”

My hand rises to my neck. It’s my seed necklace from Ecuador. “
Merci.
”

I don’t tell him that Wendell bought it for me. Just a few weeks ago, I could fit Wendell into any conversation. But now, here, with Jean-Claude’s poetry, in the afterglow of fire dancing, Wendell feels like something that didn’t quite fit into my suitcase, something I left behind, along with my navy blue skirt with too many holes and my moss-green tank
that had bleach splashed on it. Something with no place in my life now.

Of course, that’s not true. Wendell is here in this town, and tomorrow he and Jean-Claude will be in the same room, at the same table, and I can’t imagine that scene without feeling my throat start to close up.

Later, outside my apartment, my hand is fumbling around in my bag, looking for the key, when I feel something odd. A large envelope filled with something. I suck in a breath. Another mystery gift. How could my
fantôme
have slipped it in there? I’ve been so careful with my bag in crowded places.

My heart pounding, I hold the envelope up to the yellow streetlamp light. The front is marked
For Zeeta and Layla
.

Any lingering possibilities that the
fantôme
mistook me for someone else vanish. I open the envelope carefully, leaning against the stone wall. Inside are a bunch of folded-up light blue papers, and on the top, a piece of torn-out notebook paper, white and graphed, as most French notebooks are. On this top paper is a letter, written in French.

My hand is shaking, my stomach doing cartwheels. I flip through the remaining letters. They’re all addressed to Layla, dated throughout the year before I was born, and signed
J.C.

My father’s hands touched these papers. My father’s hands were here, just beneath my own hands. He wrote these words.

I tuck the pages beneath my arm and stumble up the three flights of stairs.

L
ayla’s on the roof patio, sitting at the table, making a mosaic with shards of a pot knocked over earlier by the wind. Our porch lamp bulb has burned out, so the only light comes from three candles in glass holders. Layla’s neck is craned over her project as she strains to see in the dim light. “Hello, love,” she sings when she sees me in the doorway.

“Layla,” I manage to creak, holding out the papers.

Seeing my face, she drops the pottery shards. “What’s wrong, Z?” She wipes her hands on her skirt and takes the letters, raising them to the candlelight. When she realizes what they are, her hand flies to her face. There her hand stays, over her mouth, as her eyes move over the words.

Meanwhile, I try to wrap my mind around what these letters mean. But I’m in too much shock to think straight. I can
only feel the flames inside me, an inferno of unformed emotion. Something red-hot and burning. Raw fury. At Layla. At my
fantôme
father. At life.

And then come the words, the same ones, over and over, in wave after wave.
Not fair, not fair, not fair
.

Gradually, my thoughts take shape. For years, I desperately wanted to know my father. And now—
now
—is the time he shows up. Now, when I’m way too old to cuddle on his lap or sit on his shoulders or be spun around or dance on his feet. Now, when all that can happen is awkward conversation. I’ve spent years trying to fill the hole he left—forming friendships with Paloma’s father in Guatemala, Gaby in Ecuador, Vincent and Madame Chevalier here in France, and so many others over the years … and now he drops into my life.

These gifts from him—they’re taunting. They’re cruel.

Finally, Layla has read through all the letters several times. She looks up at me. “Where did these come from?”

I force myself to form words. “My
fantôme.
” I sink into a chair, my legs too weak to hold me anymore. I have the impulse to put the letters in the fire, let them burn up, turn to ash.

“Have you read them?” Layla whispers.

I manage to shake my head.

She pulls a chair close to mine and holds the first letter between us. I keep my hands in my lap in hard, clenched fists. The letter is not in French but in English. And it’s
dated nine months before my birth. I make myself read it silently.

The next letter is also written in English.

Layla has rested her hand on her chest. She’s struggling to breathe deeply, but this is something too shocking for yogic breath to touch. She shuffles to the next letter.

Suddenly, my anger’s directed toward Layla. I turn to her and hiss, “Why didn’t you write to him?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. The night was magical for me, too. But I wanted to explore, travel. I didn’t want a man holding me back.”

“But when you found out you were pregnant?” I push. “Why didn’t you write him then?”