Babayaga

Will stood up. “Oui, je cherche Oliver.”

The woman smiled politely and switched to English, which came with a stern British accent. “You’ve come to entirely the wrong place to find him. He is almost never here, I’m afraid. You’re a writer?”

“No.”

She grinned. “So sorry, we always assume our visitors are writers; that is why we have Nicole leave them out here unattended. Sooner or later they wander away.” She stopped to correct herself. “That sounds bad. It’s not that we don’t fancy writers, we adore them, honestly, only just not the ones who tend to stop by. What do you do?”

“I’m in advertising, but—”

Her eyes lit up. “Advertising! Oh, right, then”—she firmly took him by the arm and guided him toward the door—“we should get you to Oliver right away. At this hour he’s probably at home still curled up with his coffee and a paper, it’s only a short walk from here.”

“I tried calling him at his home number earlier.”

“He rarely answers it. Oliver says the phone makes him a slave of technology, though he does love dialing me up at two a.m. with his tipsy editorial tips. Most Luddites are so charmingly inconsistent.”

Like many of the British girls Will had come across in Paris, she was chattier than she was friendly. Her name was Gwen Knight and she told him she had come over after graduating from Cambridge. She kept up a brisk pace and though she never stopped talking, she never smiled, even at her own small jokes. Will found that oddly reassuring. As good as his French was, a slight gauze still separated him from Parisian culture, and so, whenever the locals grinned at him or laughed, instead of reassuring him it actually made him a bit more insecure, since he was never sure if they were expressing sincere pleasure, indulgence, politeness, or, perhaps, mere amusement at the silly American.

Rounding the corner, she led him across the narrow street to an apartment building that had two small statues of lions sitting on either side of the door. She rang the buzzer and a fuzzy “Hullo?” came squawking out through the intercom.

“It’s Gwen, I—”

The door buzzed before she could finish her sentence. Instead of taking the elevator, Gwen climbed the stairs. Following her up, Will thought there must be circles of heaven where all one did was ascend staircases behind slender women wearing tight wool skirts. On the third floor, they reached the apartment door. It was unlocked and Gwen walked right in.

Oliver’s apartment was spacious, with a guest room by the side of the entrance and a long hallway of densely packed bookshelves leading down to the main rooms. Newspapers were stacked up in the corner, Times Heralds and Le Mondes. There were piles of opened baby blue airmail envelopes from America lying on the narrow hall table with their telltale red-white-and-blue-striped stamps. “In the back!” they heard Oliver call out from the kitchen. Gwen and Will followed the voice and, rounding the corner, they found a silk-robed Oliver smoking and leafing through a copy of Paris Match. Beside him, sitting with her morning coffee, was an only slightly dressed Zoya.

Oliver looked up with a bit of a confused grin. “Oh, hullo, Will, Gwen. What are you two doing together?”

“He came by the office,” Gwen began. “Nicole was ignoring him but I took pity. When he said he was in advertising, well, considering the straits we’re in I thought it could hardly wait—”

Oliver smiled. “Are you really here to help with our advertising, Will?”

Will looked at Zoya, her hair hung loose and tangled down her shoulders, and all she had on was one of Oliver’s tailored Oxford shirts. She sat looking at him, a slight friendly grin on her lips as if she were waiting for him to speak. Then he realized they were all waiting for him to answer. He felt confused and speechless, surprised to find his feelings all twisted, like a clumsy boy tripping on his laces while chasing some elusive bouncing ball. He paused to restart his thoughts. “Yes. I mean, no. You were supposed to drop a package off at my office yesterday.”

“That’s right!” Oliver said, lightly slapping his forehead. “I was, wasn’t I?”

“Right, so I’d like to pick that up, but I also need to talk to you, privately, about another issue. It’s very important.”

“Fine, fine, ladies, please excuse us for a moment.” Oliver led him down the hall and into the main bedroom. Will could not help but notice the top sheet and blankets were all off the bed. He saw Zoya’s shoes and blouse on the floor on one side, the skirt lay in a bundle on the other, signs of a night and maybe a morning’s passion that caused some emotion, envy, or jealousy perhaps, to well up inside Will. He tried not to think about it. “What’s up?” Oliver asked.