Chapter Five
Jackson had been wandering around Paris for two hours, and though he knew he should probably check in and catch a nap before meeting with the concert promoter tonight, he wasn’t ready to leave his old neighborhood and reenter a world in which people would fawn over him the moment he set foot in his hotel.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think he’d like the Four Seasons Hotel George V. It was that for at least the next few minutes, he didn’t want to be Jackson Quick. He wanted to be an anonymous guy on the streets of Paris.
In two hours, not a single person had said a word to him, aside from the vendor he’d bought a snack from fifteen minutes after the driver had dropped him off.
And the guy had hardly even looked at his face; he had just grunted, “Treize euros,” before accepting Jackson’s twenty-euro note, flipping a few coins back to him, and handing over a warm sugared crepe and a cold Orangina.
Since then, Jackson had wandered around the Place Saint-Michel, had crossed the Seine to Notre Dame, and strolled west to the tip of the ?le de la Cité, where he’d settled on the wall along the river and watched the world go by for a bit.
He’d crossed back over the Seine on the Pont Neuf and had woven his way to the rue de la Huchette, where he’d often gone for cheap meals and even cheaper wine after long days of busking nearby.
Even there, on a road packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists studying menus and spilling in and out of souvenir shops, he got only a few second glances.
He could practically see the thought process of those who looked twice at him.
He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.
Checking nonexistent text messages on his phone reliably spared him any further interaction as he passed.
But now he was hungry. His Apple Watch told him he had walked nearly four miles in the past couple of hours, and he’d long since burned off the crepe and soda.
Up ahead, he spotted a pub with British, American, Canadian, and Aussie flags flying, and he was struck with a sudden sense of familiarity.
The Red Telephone Box. He was almost certain that had been the name of the anglophone pub when he’d lived here, and if he remembered correctly, it served a decent lunch.
It would be an ideal place to be anonymous just a little while longer.
The sign over the door had changed—it was called LE MAISON GROG now, which made Jackson’s heart hurt a little.
It was probably a perfectly nice place—actually, it was probably indistinguishable from The Red Telephone Box—but there was something depressing about returning to a neighborhood you’d once called home and finding that everything was different.
He pulled open the door to the pub and went inside, encouraged to see that it looked largely as he’d remembered it—a long wooden bar against the back wall and worn wooden tables throughout—though the decorations had changed from kitschy telephone receivers and phone books to boomerangs and pictures of kangaroos, along with a few neon signs advertising Foster’s.
Fortunately, it was nearly empty, though there were two other parties here: a big table of older folks on one side of the room, and three young women perched at the far end of the bar.
Jackson hesitated for a moment, squinting at the women. Not one of them had looked his way yet, but he could see that they were all in their thirties. A little too young to have been his fans back at the height of his career, though their mothers might have been.
He made his way toward the opposite end of the bar and sat on one of the wooden stools, which looked old enough that he suspected they’d been here thirty-five years ago, when the bar had borne a different name.
“G’day, mate!” said the bartender, obviously an Aussie, a decade or so younger than Jackson.
For a split second, Jackson found himself thinking about roads not taken.
What if he’d worked in a bar in Paris instead of pursuing his musical dreams?
Would he be more fulfilled than he was now? Less lonely?
“Hey,” Jackson said, picking up the menu the Aussie bartender placed in front of him and using it to partially block the view of his face.
Jackson had been big in Australia and New Zealand back in the day, and the bartender was in the right range to have been at least tangentially aware of Jackson’s existence.
“What can I get you, mate?” the bartender asked, giving Jackson a puzzled look. Probably wondering what kind of weirdo comes to a bar and hides his face. Jackson reluctantly lowered the menu and watched as the bartender frowned in concentration, trying to place him.
“Have any IPAs?” Jackson asked.
“We have Balter in a can.” The bartender was still squinting at him. “It’s from the Gold Coast.”
“That sounds great.” Jackson could see the moment the bartender realized who he was—the man’s eyebrows went up as his eyes widened in surprise—and he waited to have his cover blown.
But instead, the bartender glanced down the bar at the women and seemed to make a decision. “Coming right up,” he said neutrally. “Why don’t you have a look at the menu, and I’ll be back in a moment to see what you want.”
Jackson felt a wave of relief sweep through him. “Great.” He leaned in and added, “And thank you.”
Thirty minutes later, Jackson had polished off a sausage roll and chips—exactly the same as he remembered them tasting three decades ago—and had chased the beer with a strong cup of coffee, since he was currently fighting the wave of exhaustion that had been threatening since that morning.
Meanwhile, he surreptitiously watched the other two groups in the restaurant—he loved trying to figure out what made strangers tick—and had already ascertained that the Aussie bartender was interested in one of the three women, and that the older folks at the table were on some sort of tour.
“I remember this place back when it was The Red Telephone Box,” Jackson said when the bartender, who had introduced himself as Russ, came to deliver his check.
“Do you?” The bartender looked surprised. “Terrible name, really. When my business partner and I bought this place, the name was the first thing to go.”
Jackson laughed and looked down at the bill. The bartender had only charged him for the fish and chips and coffee. “You forgot to charge me for my beer, man,” he said.
“Nah, it’s on the house,” the bartender said, his voice low. “Not every day the voice of a generation walks into my bar.”
“The voice of a generation?” Jackson had to laugh. “I don’t think anyone calls me that.”
The bartender shrugged. “I don’t know, mate. I grew up on your songs. Come back anytime, all right? We may not be The Red Telephone Box anymore, but we’re happy to be a home away from home in Paris if you need one.”
“Thank you,” Jackson said. He glanced once more down the bar at the girls and then smiled at the bartender. “And, hey, do you mind a bit of advice from the voice of a generation?”
The bartender laughed. “I’d be honored, mate.”
“That girl down there that you’ve been eyeing for the past hour? You’ve got nothing to lose by taking a chance.”
And with that, Jackson left a twenty-euro note and departed the relative anonymity of the bar for the hour-long walk to his hotel on the other side of the city. It would be easier to call a car, but he wanted to revel in being alone and unrecognized for just a little while longer.
When she and her grandfather walked into the apartment overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg, Melanie was braced for a confrontation. Grandpa Henry was right. She had to tell Gilles that she knew and let the chips fall where they may.
But the apartment was silent. “He’s not here,” she said, turning in disbelief to her grandfather, who had insisted on dragging his own bag into the elevator and down the hall, muttering something about how he wasn’t dead yet. “He said he’d be working from home today.”
“Well, then,” her grandfather said, “we’ll have a moment to figure out what you want to say.”
A wave of relief washed over Melanie. The longer Gilles was gone, the longer she could put off the inevitable.
But just then, the apartment door opened behind her, and she turned to see Gilles, who looked as put together as ever in a sharp charcoal suit, his thinning hair gelled to perfection.
“Ma chère,” he said, kissing her quickly as he stepped into the foyer.
“And, Henry, how nice to see you again. You’re looking well. ”
Gilles turned to beam at her grandfather. Grandpa Henry didn’t say a word; he just stared murderously at Gilles.
“Are you all right, Henry?” Gilles asked a bit more loudly. “Is your hearing going? I said you look very well.”
“Oh, I heard you all right,” her grandfather growled, and for the first time, Gilles seemed to understand that something was wrong. His forehead creased in confusion, and he looked at Melanie for an explanation.
But she couldn’t do it. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth.
“Melanie?” her grandfather prompted, gently placing a hand on her elbow. “I’m right here.”
“Ma chère,” Gilles said, glancing uncertainly at her grandfather before looking back at Melanie. “What is this all about?”
Her grandfather squeezed her elbow, and Melanie took a deep breath and dove headfirst into the future, blurting out, “Amandine. I know about Amandine, Gilles.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the long beat of silence that followed. Gilles looked nervously at her grandfather before turning back to Melanie. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But his stammer belied his words.
Saying nothing, Melanie pulled her phone from her pocket and turned it around to show Gilles the photo she’d taken of his text exchange.
“ ‘I can still smell you on my skin…’ ” Melanie recited.
“Attends, je peux t’expliquer,” Gilles said, holding up his hands in surrender. All the color had drained from his face.