“Estelle. A million. I don’t care. I’m on your side.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she says and throws her cigarette at him. “Maybe we should just quit. Just quit and move away and act like we never had a daughter.”
“Gimme a goddamn break. I’m tired.”
“And I’m not?” she says and bangs her fist on the bar. Then she’s up and crying before she can get out of the door.
He knocks off the drink and asks for another.
“Are you sure you want another?” M. Conrer says.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, then points at the empty glass. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he says. “Just let me sit.” M. Conrer pours and walks away, gives him the solitude he asks for. Jon watches as the old man moves to other customers, offers matches, chats about the weather, and wonders if he would be so certain, so comforting, if one of his children were forever nine years old.
M. Conrer finally says he’s not pouring any more. Jon leaves without paying and takes the metro to Saint-Michel. He thought whiskey warmed but the wind blows through his light jacket and he shivers as he moves up rue Saint-Séverin through the neon and smell of lamb. He makes his way through the Latin Quarter and to the river and walks along the sidewalk.
Nighttime dinner cruises ease by, waiters in tuxedos delivering wine and salads to the tables of the brightly lit cabins. A white foam trailing the boats. A misty rain starting to fall. He reaches the Pont des Arts and the lights of Paris—the high-priced apartments lining the river, the illumination of Notre-Dame behind him, the way the spotlights of the Louvre reach into the clouds—even in the damp night they are golden, something heavenly. He had stood there with Jennifer many times, and once, as she looked down into the river and what surrounded them, she said, “If I jumped I bet I could fly.” Then she thought about it and said, “Or probably drown.” He figured she was too light to drown, but fly, maybe. And he said, “I feel certain you’d fly but let’s not try it today.” She held out her arms and swayed. “Like this,” she said. “I’d fly like this.”
He turns up the collar on his coat and walks toward the Musée d’Orsay.
It’s several blocks, time enough for the mist to wet his face and dampen his hair. He and Estelle walked this neighborhood for days, in all directions from the museum, looking for Jennifer’s backpack or barrette or ID card. She’s a smart little girl, he kept assuring Estelle, smart enough to leave a sign. But after days, then weeks, he’d admitted to himself that they weren’t smart enough to find it. On the sidewalk along the river, a bench faces the front doors of the museum and he believes if he sits there long enough, Jennifer will come around the corner, or stick her head from around a tree and say, “Ha! Remember that time you grounded me for stealing your cigars and selling them on the playground? Got you back!”
He moves along through the mist, and when he gets to the bench, it’s already occupied. With Estelle.
“Can I sit down?” he asks.
She looks up and says, “The way you wobbled along the sidewalk, you’d probably better.”
She’s more prepared for the night than he, bundled in a thick flannel coat and her neck wrapped in a scarf. She sits slumped with her arms folded and hands tucked under her armpits.
“Been here long?” he asks.
“Hour or so.”
“Still hate me?”
She sits up straight. “Not really.”
“What the fuck is the world coming to?” he says and it sounds just like he wants it to.
“It’s come and gone, I think. It passed into Shitsville when we weren’t looking.”
They know better than to laugh but they do and it’s as if this is the first joke they’ve ever shared. Like a long-forgotten memory. She moves closer to him and he puts his arm around her.
“You smell like a bottle,” she says.
“But I’m okay. Where do we post tomorrow?”
“Nowhere. We’re out of flyers. It’ll be day after tomorrow before our next order is ready,” she says, then she slides down and puts her head in his lap and feet up on the bench. The mist turns into a drizzle but the wind has died. She closes her eyes. Jon watches people walk back and forth in front of the Musée d’Orsay. They look up and around, cup their hands and peek into the lobby, tourists who believe museums keep minimart hours. A man and a woman without hats or umbrellas notice Jon and Estelle across the street on the bench and they hurry across the traffic and over to them. The man’s face is smooth and slick in the rain and the woman hugs herself to keep warm. The man takes a tiny dictionary out of his pocket and fumbles through it but then gives up and he looks at Jon. The man points across the street at the museum and says slowly, “The mu-seum. O-pen? O-pen time?” And then he makes a motion with his hands as if he’s opening a giant book.
Jon leans forward and says, “Go. The fuck. Away.”
The man and woman look at each other, assuring themselves that this is what they have heard. Then they walk away along the sidewalk, looking back over their shoulders at the man who is staring.
“That was good,” Estelle says.
Jon brushes the wet hair away from her face, touches the wrinkles in her forehead. He asks if she wants to get out of the weather but she says, “No. It feels good.”
He lays his head back, listens to the traffic, listens to the river. The days, the weeks. Now the months. The accumulation is heavy and he is almost out when Estelle sits up and softly slaps his cheek.
“Wake up,” she says. Her dark hair is flat on her head and she licks the moistness from her upper lip. “Let’s go get drunk somewhere. Somewhere close before I change my mind.”
“Fine,” he says. “But I’ve got a head start.”
“I’ll catch you.”
She stands, takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. They walk back toward Saint-Michel, where they’ll find a warm seat in a café at a table for two in a back corner. Where they’ll spend more than they want to. Where they’ll drink and smoke and throw out meaningless comments about the music or the waitress’s shoes. Where they’ll talk themselves into expectation.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Farris Smith is a native Mississippian who has spent considerable time living abroad in France and Switzerland. He has been awarded the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the Transatlantic Review Award for Fiction, the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature, and the Brick Streets Press Short Story Award. His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. He attended Mississippi State University and later the Center for Writers at Southern Miss, and he now lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.
Learn more at www.MichaelFarrisSmith.com.
@michael_f_smith
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events a
re products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Michael Farris Smith
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition September 2013
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Designed by Akasha Archer
Jacket design by Michael Accordino
Jacket photograph by Joel Levan/Veer
Author photograph by Chris Jenkins
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Michael F. (Fiction writer)
Rivers / Michael Farris Smith. — First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
pages cm.
1. Wilderness survival—Fiction. 2. Mississippi—Fiction. 3. Dystopias. I. Title.
PS3619.M592234R58 2013
813’.6—dc23 2012049521
ISBN 978-1-4516-9942-5
ISBN 978-1-4516-9944-9 (ebook)
Contents
Epigraph
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 26
Part III
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part IV
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
The Hands of Strangers Excerpt
About the Author