Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

this, and the robotic voice asked her to type in the area code of the zone where she planned to use the phone. Almost instantaneously, she was sent a text assigning her a phone number. Once her phone had been activated, she entered the number of the prepaid card, which immediately gave her 120 minutes of communication.

She called Seymour’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail.

“Call me back at this number as soon as you can, Seymour. I really need your help. Please be quick.”

Alice then went into the bathroom, which was separated from the bedroom by a glass-brick wall. It was decorated in a retro style, very 1950s: black-and-white-checkerboard tile floor, cast-iron bathtub with brass feet, antique sink, vintage ceramic faucets, painted wooden cabinet with moldings.

Keyne had done what he’d said he would—beneath a thick cloud of foam, a steaming bath scented with lavender awaited her.

What a strange guy.

Alice undressed in front of a large, adjustable mirror with a wrought-iron frame, then slipped into the water. The heat increased her blood flow and woke all the pores in her skin. Her muscles relaxed, and the shooting pains in her joints diminished. She took deep breaths. Alice had the pleasant sensation of being swept away by a burning-hot beneficent wave, and for a few seconds she abandoned herself completely to the bath’s voluptuous languor.

Then she held her breath and plunged her head underwater.

With the alcohol in her bloodstream and the temperature of the water, she felt herself floating midway between somnolence and numbness. Contradictory thoughts flashed through her mind. Her memory loss made her impatient. Once again, Alice tried to reconstruct the previous evening, but still she ended up in that same black hole, without access to her memories. For the early part of the evening, the pieces of the puzzle slotted into place easily enough: the bars, the cocktails, her friends, the parking garage on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt. Then walking to the car. The bluish-green artificial lighting. She feels groggy, staggers as she walks. She distinctly sees herself open the door of the little Audi and sit down behind the wheel…and there’s someone sitting next to her! She remembers now. A face emerges from the darkness, taking her by surprise. A man’s face. She attempts to make out his features, but they vanish under a milky fog.

Suddenly, the flood of memories sweeps her further back in time, like a river rushing to its source in the heart of pain.

I remember…Two years ago

I remember.

Or rather, I imagine.

November 21, 2011.

A rainy day, late afternoon, in my husband’s office. An appointment with a patient is interrupted by a phone call:

“Dr. Paul Malaury? This is the surgery department in the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Your wife has just been brought here. She’s in critical condition…”

In a panic, Paul grabs his coat, stammers a few words of explanation to his secretary, and runs out of his office. He sits behind the wheel of his old Alfa Romeo Giulietta, parked, as always, straddling a little bit of sidewalk in front of Paris’s public-housing agency. The rain has reduced his daily parking ticket to a pulp. He starts the engine, drives around the square, and turns onto Rue du Bac.

Night has already fallen, after a grim, wet fall day—the kind of day that makes you loathe Paris, this cancerous, polluted, overcrowded hell engulfed in misery and madness. Traffic is crawling on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Paul uses his sleeve to wipe condensation from the inside of his windshield. Then he uses the same sleeve to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

Alice, the baby…please don’t let this be true!

He has been euphoric ever since he discovered he was going to be a father. Already he is looking forward to it all: baby bottles, walks with the stroller in the Jardin du Luxembourg, sandcastles on the beach, the first day of school, soccer fields on Sunday mornings…a series of moments now dissolving in his mind.

He forces away these morbid thoughts and tries to remain calm, but the emotion is too powerful and his body is shaken by sobs. His pain becomes mixed with anger. He bawls like a kid. Stuck at a traffic light, he smashes his fist against the steering wheel. He can still hear the nurse’s words describing the horror: “I’m not going to lie to you, Doctor: It’s very serious. She was attacked with a knife. She has several wounds in her abdomen…”

The light turns green. He speeds away and jerks his wheel to the side to take the bus lane. He wonders how this could have happened. How could his wife—with whom he ate lunch that very day in a little bar on Rue Guisarde—have been stabbed in a squalid apartment in west Paris when she was supposed to be spending the afternoon with her midwife, preparing for the birth?

Images flash through his head again: Alice lying in a pool of blood, the ambulance arriving, the paramedic making the first report: “Patient unstable, systolic pressure dropping, weak pulse, heart rate one hundred. We’re going to intubate her.”

Paul flashes his headlights, passes two taxis, and is about to turn left, when he sees that Boulevard Saint-Michel is cordoned off by cops because of a protest march. He clenches his jaw. Fuck! I don’t believe this!

He lowers his window to talk to the police officers, hoping they will let him through, but he comes up against the brick wall of their inflexibility and drives away angrily, yelling insults at them.

He turns back onto Boulevard Saint-Germain without signaling and a bus driver honks his horn.

He has to calm down. Focus all his energy on saving his wife. He has to find a doctor capable of performing miracles. He wonders if he knows any of the doctors at Hôtel-Dieu.

Pralavorio, maybe? No, he works at Bichat. Jourdin? He’s at Cochin, but he knows everyone. He’s the one I should call. He reaches for his phone, which he left on top of his coat on the passenger seat, but he can’t find it.

The old