Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

Marla wrinkles her nose. “I don’t. At the time I didn’t pay much attention, but now that I think about it, it seems weird. Then again, when she came to live with Mom after Tom died, I was out of the house a lot.”

Marla shrugs and sighs.

I never met Tom. He died before I was born. Since both grandmothers were widows and my mother wasn’t married, there wasn’t much talk about weddings or anniversaries.

Suddenly, exhaustion takes down my brain like a power outage.

“I’m going to go take a shower and then we both need to get some sleep,” I say. “Tomorrow’s another day. The diary is not going anywhere, and neither are its clues.”

June 1927

Paris, France

Dear Diary,

I am elated! A woman I met when I went out with Helen and Luc tonight told me that the department store Galeries Lafayette was hiring sales floor attendants. Why did I not think of something like this sooner? The place is not so dissimilar to Selfridges, where I worked in London. In fact, it’s perfect. At least in the meantime, until I can find work as a designer. I have been so blinded by the need to find work with a couture house that I ignored alternative opportunities.

I will inquire after a position first thing tomorrow. It would be wonderful if I could work in tailoring, but I will take any job that pays a decent wage. When I am gainfully employed, Helen will get off my back about working for Pierre, who, just between you and me, I find to be a most disagreeable fellow. Fingers crossed!

Ten

January 3, 2019—8:00 a.m.

Paris, France

The next morning, we grab a quick breakfast of coffee and fresh croissants at the café next to the hotel. To save money, we’ve decided to clean the place ourselves rather than hiring the cleaning service as Monsieur Levesque suggested. We ask the concierge to direct us to a hardware store.

He tells us about a shop called Aux Couleurs Modernes.

The last thing I ever imagined I’d search for in Paris was a hardware store. But people do live here, and even Parisians need supplies to fix up their homes. We’re already living like locals.

The store is small with crowded metal shelves set up in narrow aisles. We purchase a couple of buckets and mops, rags and paper towels, all-purpose cleaner, rubber gloves, plastic safety goggles to keep the dust out of our eyes, and white dust-filtering masks to keep the dirt from asphyxiating us. We also grab a couple of twin air mattresses to sleep on until we can buy new beds. I shudder to think what might be living in the double that’s been there for eighty years.

At the register, I grab two bandannas for our hair—a green one for Marla and a hot-pink one for myself. With the goggles, masks, and scarves, at least our top halves should be sufficiently shielded from the grime.

Marla flirts with one of the shop clerks and lets me pay for our purchases.

Packages in hand, we stop outside of the store to regroup.

“I’ll save the receipt so we can add it into the final expenses for the house,” I say.

Marla nods. “Maybe we should go back in there and get that wet-and-dry vac we were looking at. We’ll be moving around a lot of dust in that apartment. And where there are webs, there are sure to be spiders.”

“The dust won’t move around very much after water hits it and we pour it down the drain,” I say.

Marla crosses her arms and frowns. “Sounds like a recipe for mud. Maybe it would be a good idea to vacuum up the top layer because… spiders, Hannah.”

When I don’t answer, she says, “Here, hold this.” She hands me her mop and bucket, which is full of supplies. I nearly drop mine as I try to get a grip on hers. “I’ll be right back.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Hannah, we need it. It’s on me.”

The model she had been looking at was a five-gallon vacuum that costs about forty-five euros. I don’t know how well it will hold up under all the grime, but if she wants to buy it, I won’t argue with her.

A few minutes later, she emerges from the shop empty-handed.

“Did you change your mind?”

She reclaims her bucket and mop. “Nope. The charming man at the register offered to deliver it.”

She actually bats her eyes at me.

It’s a good twenty-minute walk to the apartment. We pass the magnificent Galeries Lafayette department store and église de la Sainte Trinité. I enjoy the chilly morning air and marvel at Paris all around me. There’s barely a trace of last night’s snow.

I slept remarkably well. After meeting with Monsieur Levesque yesterday and signing the papers, I am finally letting myself believe that this apartment is ours.

I’ll battle cobwebs and dust any day if it means we can call the apartment—and all its secret history—our own.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Marla says as we approach the building and I set down my bucket to unlatch the gate. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking that last week if you’d asked me how I was going to spend my second day in Paris, I never would’ve dreamed I’d be hauling a bucket full of cleaning supplies to an old apartment and preparing to spend the day cleaning. I haven’t even seen the Eiffel Tower yet.”

Marla chuckles. “There’s plenty of time for that. I’ll bet if you went to the Champs-Élysées and asked the tourists if they’d rather sightsee or clean an apartment that they can keep after the job is done, all of them would take the apartment.”

“I’m not complaining. I can’t believe we’re here.”

“We’ll get to see everything. After we get our work done.”

I start to point out that work-before-play is a very un-Marla-like statement, but I stop myself.

Instead, I say, “All right. I’m holding you to it.”

I shift the heavy bucket from one hand to the other as we ride the elevator