The Hands of Strangers Read online

  4

  It rains the next three days as Jon moves constantly around the city handing out the new pamphlets in the metro, outside government buildings, on the outskirts of the city where rents are low. He places the new posters in metro halls, at the train stations, on public notice boards in the parks. Jennifer’s face is clear in the full-color photograph, her smile shows her teeth, her hair in a ponytail. Detective Marceau suggested a photo with her hair pulled back to focus on the face.

  The rain has been steady and he has been wet from morning until returning home in the evening. Estelle has caught a second wind and she sits in the apartment and plots the strategy with a revived gusto. On Monday morning she threw away the worn, smaller maps and she bought new red pens, a poster-size city map, and a carton of cigarettes. She removed photographs and a shelf from a kitchen wall and put the map up with nails. She uses a yellow highlighter to mark the areas less likely to prove helpful, tourist spots and business centers where people hurry. At the end of each day Jon comes home, sits in a hot bath, tells her he had a good day.

  When Jon leaves the apartment Thursday morning, the rain has stopped but the clouds remain. Over his shoulder is a duffel bag filled with the pamphlets. He carries the posters in a plastic tube. He is bound for the northern part of the city, to the eighteenth arrondissement. He stops at M. Conrer’s café and has two coffees and a short glass of whiskey. M. Conrer says “Bonne chance” as he walks out the door.

  He gets on the metro and sits down. He has twelve stops to wait. By the time the metro reaches Abbesses there is no crowd, only a handful of people getting on and off. He walks to both exits and puts up new posters, and on an earlier orange poster, a black question mark has been drawn in the center of Jennifer’s face. He doesn’t remember if he did it or not.

  He walks up the stairs of the exit and the streets are more quiet here than in the city’s center. Half the stores have yet to open, trucks deliver newspapers to the newsstands, a dog without an owner walks by Jon as he kneels to reach into the duffel bag for pamphlets. At the end of the street is a bus stop and, not yet ready to begin, he walks over and sits down. He opens the pamphlet.

  Inside is Jennifer’s birth date, ID number, height, weight, hair and eye color. The mention of a mole on the right shoulder. Unique traits: she bites her bottom lip, left-handed, bony elbows and knees, speaks French, English, and very basic Italian. When and where she was last seen. What she was wearing. The name of the school she attends and its phone number. Detective Marceau’s contact information. A phone number for Estelle at home. A phone number for Jon at work. Then at the bottom of the right side, in bold black lettering, the reward of fifty thousand euros. No one is sure where it will come from.

  There’s too goddamn much on here, he thinks. Or maybe not enough.

  A bus arrives and opens its doors. Jon climbs the bus steps, hands the driver the pamphlet, then gets off and sits down on the bench again. The dog that passed him before returns and sits at his feet. Its tongue hangs out, pink and dry, and its coat is reddish-brown, but the nose is white. It has a collar and Jon looks at the tag, but the tag is scratched and faded and unreadable.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says and the dog leaves. Jon watches it walk into the open door of a café. He sits until another bus arrives but he only waves it on when the door opens. He takes flyers from the duffel bag, leaves them on the bench, then goes into the same café as the dog.

  The dog lies on the floor at the end of the bar, a bowl of water and a bowl of food next to it. Jon sits at a table against the wall and sets the duffel bag in the chair across from him. He lays the tube on the table. A teenage girl in a crimson turtleneck and jeans comes over and asks what he’d like. He asks for another coffee and another whiskey, then he takes off his coat and takes the morning paper from the table next to him. The waitress returns and he decides to drink before reading. He looks around the café, at the dog, at the young girl, then on the wall across from him he notices a painting.

  She is in front of the waterfall, the sun behind her. Her dress is thin and hangs like a slip and rises above her knees. Her skin is rich and chocolate and her bare feet are crossed as she leans with her back against a rock as tall as she is. She tilts her head forward and toward the ground and her black hair is long and straight and falls to the front, and with the light behind her, her face is draped in shadow, her eyes dead set like stones. The shadow breaks across her chest and soft light shines on her arms and legs.

  Jon crosses the room to look closer. “Do you know who painted this?” he asks the waitress.

  “I think Iris. Iris something.”

  “Can you find out for sure?”

  She shrugs her shoulders and says, “I’ll have to ask my father.” Jon looks back at the painting and tries to think of a name for her, something exotic, strange. Something with –asia on the end. The girl goes through a swinging door into the kitchen and Jon hears her ask the father about the artist. She returns and walks around the bar to Jon, then hands him a slip of paper. “This is her name,” she says. “Her studio is close to here. Four or five blocks.”

  He reads the name. Iris Conrad, 82 rue Tholoz. After the coffee and whiskey he leaves money on the table and walks out of the café. The wind blows and pushes the clouds and by afternoon there might be sun. Shop owners move tables onto the sidewalks. A group of schoolchildren in navy-blue sweaters cross the street in single file like a row of ducks as a large woman with glasses and an even larger navy-blue sweater directs. Jon makes it three blocks, then at the fourth he comes to rue Tholoz, a narrow, one-way brick street lined by four-story buildings. Puddles linger from three days’ rain and stretch the length of the curb and a truck blocks the street as two men load furniture into the back of it. He finds the address and the building is more worn than the others, its faded beige stucco cracked and missing both high and low, exposing pockets of red brick and crumbling mortar. The nameplate is there and he goes into the unlocked front door of the building. The stairway is dimly lit and he climbs to the third floor, stepping lightly, as if trying to sneak in and out undetected. On the third floor there is only one door and he knocks.

  A voice from inside calls softly, “Who is it?”

  Jon hesitates, hasn’t thought of what he would say. She calls out again, and he answers, “Excuse me but I’m looking for Iris Conrad. I saw some of your work and liked it. Is that you?”

  She’s quiet.

  “Please, just give me a minute to talk with you.” The lock clicks and the door opens.

  “Only a moment,” she says. “I am working and it’s hard to start back again if I wait too long.”

  He steps inside and the strong, toxic smell of paint makes him momentarily light-headed. He follows her into a large room without furniture, painting after painting of women, leaning on the walls and sitting on easels. Drop cloths cover the floor from wall to wall. The walls are brick and splattered with an array of colors as if a child has been allowed to play. Two tall windows look out across a small courtyard, no larger than the room itself.

  She walks into the middle of the room, turns, props her hands on her hips. Jon sets the duffel bag and poster tube on the floor. “You have so many,” he says.

  She only nods and moves toward the windows, folds her arms. Her hair is auburn and choppy and looks like she cuts it herself. Her face is fair and her mouth small, and her lips shine as if wet. She wears a splattered T-shirt and baggy jeans rolled up to her knees and she’s barefoot, her feet and calves spotted with blue and white paint. She unfolds her arms and turns to Jon and she is as old as he is, maybe older.

  “What do you want?” she asks, and her French has a distinct German accent.

  He looks around the room, and says, “All women?”

  “You walked all the way down this dirty street to tell me this? If you’re finished, I need to get back to work. I’m not a child with finger paint.”


  Jon looks at two paintings side by side on easels. In the first, a woman sits on a park bench with her legs stretched out and her arms to her sides as if she is unconscious or sleeping. In the second, a woman, dressed in nearly nothing, is sitting on concrete steps, the building unseen. In each painting, and in all of the different paintings in the room, the expression of the faces is long and melancholy, like the painting in the café.

  “I saw one of your paintings in a café a few blocks from here. A woman in front of a waterfall,” Jon says as he kneels down and looks at a woman reflected in a store window. “Why not men?”

  She gives a playful laugh, then says, “What is mysterious about the man?”

  He thinks. Looks down. Can’t answer.

  “I look at you now and you are as blank as a bed sheet,” she says. “A man is a marquee, bright and obvious. A woman is la mer. Always the face of the woman is the man’s answer to everything. Like in life. If a woman smiles, the man thinks he has done well. If she frowns, he believes he has done wrong. It is not so simple.”

  “Do you know what painting I’m talking about in the café?”

  She walks around Jon, circles the room with her hands behind her back, hums a solid note. He notices her forearms and calves, thin and pale like sand.

  “Yes, I remember this. A scared woman.”

  “She was scared?”

  “Then—yes. Now—I don’t know. What did you see when you looked at her?”

  “Lost, I think. Or waiting on someone.”

  She rubs her forehead and brushes back her hair, then points at a portrait of a woman sitting in a chair with a book. “And this one. What do you see?”

  Her legs are apart and her elbows rest on the chair arms. The head is turned away from the open book. “She doesn’t look comfortable. Maybe she is doing something she shouldn’t. Surprised, I think.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her head nod.

  “Is that right?” he asks.

  She shrugs. “How do I know? I only paint them because they keep me company. It is up to you what you see.”

  “I don’t know what I see. Nothing.”

  “No. I don’t think you see nothing.”

  I see nothing very clearly, he thinks. More clearly every day.

  She looks over her shoulder at the duffel bag and says, “What is in the bag?”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  She laughs, says, “You are full of nothing.”

  “I told you.”

  They exchange a smile and the moment stalls. He folds his arms, looks away from her. “Do you sell your work?” he asks.

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Sometimes. If I need to. But it is difficult to let them go. They take time.”

  “Would you sell the woman in the café?”

  “That’s a question for the café. They already bought it. Why do you want her?”

  “I don’t know. She reminds me of someone.”

  He looks at Iris and feels himself drift. He looks at her but looks through her, as if she were made of mesh. I want her because she reminds me of someone. Because I think she is waiting and I don’t want her to wait any longer. And then he closes his eyes and when he opens them they are full and he bites down to hold the tears back but they escape. “I’m sorry for bothering you,” he says and she steps to him. She takes the front of her shirt and reaches up to his face and wipes it. She is half a foot shorter than him and the shirt lifts high and she is exposed, the skin of her stomach and breasts the same soothing pale tone, and Jon notices a coin-size tattoo of a star between her breasts. And then something else in him moves, pushing down the hurt. Iris steps back and continues to hold the sweatshirt up above her stomach. He looks down her neck, to her stomach and then to her feet, and she says, “Maybe you are not so obvious.”

  “Can I show you something?” he asks. She nods and Jon picks up the tube and takes out a poster, unfolds it, and shows it to Iris. “This is my daughter,” he says.

  She looks up and down the poster, reaches for it, but her fingertips stop short of touching the child’s face. “How long?” she asks.

  “About five months. Forever.”

  I have to go, he thinks as he looks at Jennifer. I have work to do. I have to go. He rolls the poster and says, “If I leave this, will you paint her like you have painted the others?”

  She pauses and looks toward the window. “No,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not something I want to do.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she is real. These paintings aren’t real. If I paint her she won’t look the way that she looks. She will be different.”

  “I don’t care. It’s something.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “No shit,” he says. “I’ve been trying to pay people for five months to help, and you’re right, it doesn’t matter.” He opens the tube and sticks the poster inside and then he grabs the duffel bag.

  “Slow down,” she says and she grabs his arm. “Your eyes are still wet.” She takes the duffel bag from his hand and sets it down, and then she takes away the tube, and then she rubs her hands slowly up and down his arms as if to smooth the fabric. He stands still, feels something move again in the way that she touches him. She raises her shirt to wipe his face and the star reappears.

  “Do you have anything to drink?” he asks.

  She nods and says, “Some wine.” But Jon doesn’t let her walk away. Instead, he reaches out and takes her shirt in his hands and slowly eases it up. She surprises him when she lifts her arms and he pulls it over her head and the feeling shoots through him that if he could only take her jeans off and lay her down and spread her legs then the world would stop and give him a moment’s peace. The feeling shoots through him like an arrow. It owes me, he thinks. Doesn’t matter who I am and who she is. It owes me this. This thoughtless act. One thoughtless act. Just close your eyes and fuck it all away. Estelle can blame me but would she, and if I could give her a moment, wouldn’t I? Iris unbuttons his coat and he lets it drop from his shoulders and to the floor. He wants to say something but doesn’t know what and then his shirt is gone and she is stepping out of the jeans that have fallen around her ankles and he stares at the star and she unbuckles his belt. They stand there, facing each other, naked except for what is necessary, still covered by soft material.

  If I could give her a moment, wouldn’t I? He thinks of her, curled on the couch in the middle of the night, eyes held open by question marks. He gets on his knees and runs his hands along the hips of the woman who paints the empty expressions, slips his fingers inside her panties. Pulling them down would be as easy as a breath but he holds. She runs her hand sympathetically across the top of his head.

  He removes his fingers. Slides his hands down the sides of her legs, touches the spots of paint on her feet. He reaches over and picks up her shirt from the floor and holds it to her. She takes it and he starts to apologize then he wonders what the hell for, all I want is a goddamn moment of peace and what am I apologizing for, and he snatches the sweatshirt from her and he pulls her down and there is no more stopping and she is warm and the perfect center of nothing.

  He wakes and finds her beside him. A white sheet covers them. He looks around at the paintings and the women stare back. Iris has her back turned to him. Dull afternoon light shines in the windows, the sun still hidden by clouds. He slides out from under the blanket and picks up his clothes. As he is dressing, she wakes and sits up. She covers herself with the sheet and watches him step into his pants, then she stretches and the sheet falls. She yawns, then says, “There is a bottle of wine in the kitchen. Through that door. Bring it for us.”

  “I can’t. Not now.”

  She frowns, then says, “W
hat a strange first day for us.”

  The first day, he thinks, and feels an odd comfort that she has made this sound like a beginning.

  He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t look at the paintings, but stares at the wall.

  “Every day is strange,” he says. “And tomorrow will be stranger than today.” He picks up the tube and the bag. “I’m supposed to be putting these up around the city. I have to go.”

  “Can I keep one?” she asks.

  “I thought you said no.”

  “I did say no. And I still mean no. But if you don’t leave one, there is no chance.”

  Jon opens the tube and sets a poster on the floor. “Do you paint every day?” he asks.

  “I am here all the time,” she says and she stands without the sheet. She takes his arm and walks him to the door. “You can come back if you would like.”

  Jon takes another long look at her body, at the tattoo, then he opens the door and she stands behind it, hiding herself from any eyes in the hallway.

  After Iris closes the door, she listens to make certain Jon is out of the building. Then she gets dressed and sits in the floor and unrolls the poster of Jennifer. She admires the child’s cheekbones, the innocent skin, the arched eyebrows. She goes into the kitchen and from the garbage she takes two empty water bottles and two empty wine bottles and sets them on the edges of the poster. Then she removes a painting near the window from its easel and she takes the easel and a clean canvas into another empty room of the apartment. She sits again on the floor and stares at Jennifer. After several minutes, she stands, walks slowly around the room, watching the child’s face change with the shifting glare of the daylight, with the shadow of her body as she crosses in front of the window. She circles twice, then she sits again and rips the contact information off the bottom of the poster, leaving only the child.

  She gets up and takes the empty bottles and poster into the other room. She spreads the child out on the floor next to the easel, goes back for the paint and brushes. She looks on the floor at Jennifer and then she thinks of Jon. His blank face propped on top of broad, sagging shoulders. And then she dabs her brush into the black and makes two dots where she believes the eyes will be. She stands back and the dots appear heavy and cold, but she likes it, and thinks it appropriate for this new work to begin with the emptiness.